Whisper in the Dark (A Thriller) (6 page)

He exchanged looks with Simm, whose body language spoke of a sudden distaste for all things Blackburn. Tolan had a hard time believing Simm would make such a blatant error, but sent him an unspoken message to keep his cool.

It took obvious effort, but Simm complied.

After a moment, Tolan said, “I’m sure it’s a simple oversight. I’ll reexamine her once I get into the room.”

“She’s in SR-three,” Simm said. “Without the tox screen results it’s hard to rule out any possible organic causes, but judging by what the EMTs told me, I’d say she’s presenting all the characteristics of BRP.”

Brief Reactive Psychosis was a fairly common disorder brought on by sudden intense stress or psychological trauma. Aggressive behavior and nonsensical phrases were typical indicators. It usually didn’t last long, no more than a day or two, but sometimes the symptoms could take up to a month to clear. Anything beyond that and they’d have to start considering Schizophreniform Disorder or even schizophrenia itself.

Unfortunately, without a patient history, they had no way of knowing how long the symptoms had been present.

“You restrain her?”

Simm shook his head. “She hasn’t demonstrated any violent or self-destructive behavior since she was admitted. I didn’t see any reason to.”

“Mistake number two,” Blackburn said.

Tolan shot him a glance. Despite what Blackburn might think, he supported Simm’s decision. California statute prohibited the use of restraints unless the patient presented an immediate danger to herself or the staff, a law not everyone paid attention to.

But Tolan did. And he was glad Simm had made the right call.

“Thanks, Clayton. Go on home and get some sleep.”

“It’s early. I’ve still got an hour or so.”

Tolan appreciated the man’s dedication, but tried his own hand at bluntness.

“You look like hell,” he said, then patted Simm’s shoulder. “Now get out of here.”

8 

T
HE CORRIDORS OF
the detention unit were quiet at this time of morning.

That would change soon enough.

After the current roster of patients began to trickle awake and new patients were escorted in, the buzz of activity would rise to almost intolerable levels, making it nearly impossible to think, let alone work.

A colleague of Tolan’s had once asked him why he’d left the relative peace and quiet of private practice for the chaos of this place. He couldn’t really remember his answer. Something noble, no doubt. Truth be told, he was here for one simple reason:

Penance.

He led Blackburn down a wide, battle-scarred hallway past the windowed doors of the seclusion rooms. There were six rooms in all, each with an adjacent observation booth, each housing one of their more dangerous patients.

As they passed the door to SR-6, Tolan heard a loud pounding sound and turned to see the face of a young man framed in the small rectangle of safety glass in the upper half of the door.

“Hey, Doc, I gotta talk to you.”

Bobby Fremont. Twenty-three years old. Suffering from Antisocial Personality Disorder and at the tail end of a manic episode. His voice was muffled through the glass.

Tolan held a finger up to Blackburn, then moved to an intercom mounted near the door and flicked a switch. “What is it, Bobby?”

“Who’s the new girl? The one they brought in this morning?”

“That isn’t your concern.”

“Come on, man, cut me a break here. I’ve had a stiffy ever since I saw them drag her down the hallway.”

Tolan frowned at him. “Sorry they even let you see her, Bobby. They should’ve closed your shade.”

The detention unit was coed only out of necessity. Which sometimes created problems. Especially for guys like Bobby, who was often sexually aggressive.

“Fuck that,” Fremont said. “Why you always wanna spoil my fun?”

“That’s not what I’m trying to—”

“You fucking with me, Doc? Huh? Is that what you’re doing? You start fucking with me, I’ll rip your goddamn head off and shit down your throat.”

Tolan paused. That was a new one.

“I mean it, asshole. You’ll be puking blood all over the goddamn linoleum. And when I’m done with you, I’ll stick that bitch six ways to Sunday and she’ll love every minute of it.”

“Jesus,” Blackburn muttered.

Tolan shot him a look, then returned his attention to Fremont. The kid had been in and out of jailhouses and psych wards since he was eleven years old, presenting the typical behavior associated with the disorder: truancy, stealing, vandalism, assault, and more fights than he was able or willing to remember.

The cops, who dealt with him on a regular basis, had brought him here two days earlier for his umpteenth psych evaluation after he’d beaten a drug dealer almost senseless and urinated on his head. Just another day for Bobby.

A sudden thought occurred to Tolan.

This morning’s phone call.

I just wanted to wish you a happy anniversary before I slit your throat
.

Could the caller have been Bobby? He certainly had the necessary temperament. But how could he have gotten hold of a phone? Or, for that matter, Tolan’s cell phone number?

Making a mental note to check with staff, Tolan said, “Why don’t we talk about this in session?”

Fremont slapped a palm against the glass. “Fuck session. Just let me out of this freak factory.”

“It’s either here or jail, Bobby. You know that.”

“Fuck you,” Fremont said. “You’re a dead man. You hear me? Don’t you ever turn your back on me.” He kicked the door, then disappeared from sight.

Tolan flicked off the intercom and sighed. Aggressive behavior had kept Fremont from maintaining a job or any significant social relationships for the better part of his life. After treating him on and off for the last several months, Tolan was convinced that, despite claims to the contrary, Bobby was purposely looking for ways to get himself back inside.

He suspected it was loneliness more than anything else that brought him here. The only staff member Fremont had developed a decent relationship with was Lisa, and Tolan wouldn’t be surprised to discover that she was part of the allure.

“And I thought
I
had the world’s shittiest job,” Blackburn said.

Tolan turned. “Do me a favor and keep your comments to yourself. Especially when I’m talking to a patient.”

“Sorry, Doc.”

“You keep saying that.”

“I’ve got a couple of exes don’t think I say it enough.”

“I can only imagine.”

C
ASSIE GERRITT,
a third-year med school student who moonlighted as an orderly, was stationed inside the observation booth. She was a ruddy-faced kid with an easy, Southern smile, who just happened to be built like a fullback—a physical trait that often came in handy when dealing with some of their more uncooperative patients.

She was seated at a computer, her concentration centered on the glowing monitor, when Tolan and Blackburn stepped into the booth.

She looked up in surprise. “Dr. Tolan. You’re up awfully early.”

“Nothing like a little Circadian Rhythm Disorder to keep things interesting,” he said. “This is Frank Blackburn.”

As Cassie and Blackburn exchanged hellos and shook hands, Tolan looked through the one-way mirror into the small room beyond, which, like everything else in the building, was showing its age.

A single fluorescent fixture above the bed did little to illuminate pale green walls that had been scarred by several decades of graffiti. Each year a new coat of paint was slapped on, only to be followed by another layer of desperate and often incoherent messages scratched into the surface by fingernail, pencil, or anything else a patient could manage to get his hands on.

Some of them were written in blood.

Jane Doe Number 314 lay in the fetal position, her back to the glass, her hair still damp from the shower the nursing staff had given her. Her blanket lay at her feet and she was hugging herself, the thin white hospital smock doing little to warm her.

Tolan turned to Cassie. “She’s shivering. You might want to turn up the heat in there.” One of the few good things the unit had been blessed with was climate-controlled rooms. In theory, at least.

“She isn’t reacting to the cold,” Cassie said. “It’s already set at seventy-eight degrees.”

“Oh?”

“Ever since we put her in there, she’s been shivering and twitching like she’s got bugs in her veins. You ask me, we’re looking at an acute case of RLS.” Like most med school students, Cassie was always anxious to demonstrate her diagnostic skills, but her accuracy rate left something to be desired.

Blackburn said, “That’s that restless leg thing, right?”

She nodded. “It’s a neurologic movement disorder. Affects about ten percent of the population.”

“I think my first wife had it. Drove me nuts with all her kicking and twitching in the middle of the night. I always told her she was possessed by the Devil. Which pretty much turned out to be true.”

They both looked at him and Blackburn shrugged. “Just making conversation.”

Tolan returned his gaze to Jane Doe. She was much smaller than he had expected.

Although psychotic rage—if that indeed was what she had experienced—often gave its victims strength beyond their size, the way Blackburn had described her, Tolan had envisioned another Cassie.

An Amazon, not a pixie.

He guessed she was about 5’ 1”, with a weight count just over 100 lbs.

With the exception of Lisa and, of course, Cassie, it seemed to Tolan that he had always been surrounded by an inordinate amount of petite women: his mother and two sisters, several of the nurses on staff—and Abby, who had often shopped in the junior section of Macy’s because the clothes fit her better.

At 6’ 2”, he had towered over her. To some, their pairing had seemed incongruous, like an old vaudevillian comedy team. But he had loved the compactness of her body, the small, soft curves, and the way it fit so naturally with his.

Adjusting to Lisa’s taller, more muscular frame had taken time. And sometimes, like this morning, when they made love, he found himself yearning for, even imagining, those small, soft curves. Then he’d open his eyes, see Lisa staring up at him, and the feeling of finality, the sense of loss that had plagued him for so long, was as devastating as a blow to the chest.

Tolan suddenly realized that Cassie was saying something. A jumble of words flitted by without fully registering on the radar.

“Sorry,” he said. “What was that?”

“I hear she’s quite a handful. You want me to go in there with you?”

Tolan shook his head. “I’ll manage. But stay alert.” He turned to Blackburn. “And don’t expect much. It may take awhile to get her to trust me.”

“Faith, Doc, that’s what I’ve got. I know you won’t let me down.”

Tolan had no response to that.

9

S
HE DIDN’T STIR
when he entered the room. Showed no indication that she even knew he was there. She had stopped shivering, but her back still faced him, her body pulled into that tight fetal ball.

He grabbed a chair from the corner and sat next to her. As he got in close, staring at her frail, hunched shoulders, an odd feeling washed over him. A feeling of . . . how could he describe it?

Of familiarity.

Which, of course, made no sense. As far as he knew, he’d never seen this woman before in his life. Yet the feeling persisted, like an old memory that weighs on the mind but refuses to surface.

Tolan sat there a moment, watching her, noting the gentle rise and fall of her back as she breathed, wondering what it was that brought that feeling on.

Then, doing his best to push it aside, he said softly, “Good morning.”

The shoulders stiffened. He’d startled her. Not what he’d wanted to do, but he pressed on. “Easy now, I just want to talk.” He paused. “I’m Dr. Tolan. You think you could tell me your name?”

A sound rose from her small figure, an animal-like whimper. Frightened. In pain. But it wasn’t in response to his question. It was an involuntary utterance, as if she were struggling with a nightmare. But he was sure she was wide awake.

She started shivering again, reminding him, oddly enough, of an old dog he’d once had. A black Akita that suffered from Cognitive Dysfunction Syndrome. Canine Alzheimer’s. The dog would sometimes shiver uncontrollably, her head low, tail tucked between her legs, as if she’d forgotten who or where she was and couldn’t find her way home.

Watching Jane Doe shiver, he remembered Blackburn’s insistence that she was a junkie, and wondered if he might be right. Her erratic behavior, coupled with the body spasms, might indicate the beginning stages of withdrawal.

Or maybe, as Simm had suggested, her symptoms were trauma-induced. Severe trauma could produce a number of unpredictable psychological and physical reactions, and this woman had possibly seen or even participated in a brutal murder.

He leaned in closer. “If you can’t or don’t want to tell me your name,” he said, “what do I call you?”

Another whimper. No telling what it meant.

“All right,” Tolan said. “No names for now. Let’s try something different.”

Despite his faith in Simm’s examination, he wanted to check her arms for needle marks, hoping he’d be able to avoid too severe a reaction. He thought about calling Cassie into the room, but decided against it. He sensed no threat from this woman. Not even a hint.

“Dr. Simm did a wonderful job of making sure you’re physically healthy, but there are still a couple things I need to check. So I’m going to have to touch you. Do you understand?”

No sound at all this time.

She was still hugging herself, elbows tucked inward. He waited a moment, then carefully reached over and took hold of her exposed right hand, which gripped her left shoulder so tightly the knuckles were white.

The touch seemed to set off a spark and she jerked away from him, hugging herself even tighter.

Tolan gave her a moment and she relaxed a bit.

“Let’s try one more time,” he said. “I promise I won’t hurt you.”